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Chapter 1: Logan


Logan, please ask Team Omega to assemble right away in my office, Professor Xavier requested telepathically.

Sure Chuck. Logan groaned as he sat up from the work he was doing on his Harley. Getting to his feet, he reached for a rag to wipe the oil from his hands before using his comlink to contact his team.

His team. The words sounded funny to him, only having been bestowed the responsibility of leading Team Omega on Monday. Now, three days later, they were being summoned to the Prof’s office to get their first assignment.

Logan stood and stretched to his full 5”8 feet height. Though the shortest male on his team, he was powerfully built, his muscular physique well defined. His dark hair and steel color eyes added to the overall effect of the compact powerhouse who, as his teammate knew, didn’t take no shit.

Even though he was only 17, he had lived what felt like a thousand of lifetimes in his short life. Sitting down, he took a moment to reflect on his life up to this point.

His mutant abilities manifested when he was 8 years old. He was shuffled from one foster home to another, until he landed in the place where his childhood ended. During a particularly violent beating session, Logan lashed out and out of his hands, six bony claws emerged. He suddenly felt his injuries healing as he gazed at his foster father. Just as suddenly, everything in front him became tinged in a red haze. Breathing heavily, Logan told him no more and turned and went into his room.

After he had calmed down, he stared at his hands for a long time, willing the claws to come out again. When they did, he gasped in pain but the pain quickly ceased as the skin around the claws healed. He heard movement and looked up, sensing the movement of his foster family in the different parts of the house. He could even hear the movements of the dog as it moved around outside. His eyes could detect the movement of small insect in the corner as it scuttled from one place to another. It was as if the world became alive, all of the sounds and scents hitting him at once.

Logan, overwhelmed with the information overload, closed his eyes and took deep breaths, a calming exercise he had perfected. In a calmer state, he was able to focus and hearing his name, he focused on his foster father on the phone, telling the person on the line that he needed to speak with the Doctor.

Logan wasn’t surprised to see the black sedan in front of his foster home when he arrived home after school the next day. What was shocking was the exchange of money between a guy in a long, white scientist coat and his foster father.

Logan, seeing the transaction, lashed out, leaving his last foster father with a scar that he would carry for the rest of his days as a reminder of what he had done. That was the first time Logan drew blood with his bony claws and he soon learned, it would not be the last.

The Weapon X project, as it was known internally, was searching for ways to capitalize on the mutant phenomena and manipulate the evolutionary process to create super soldiers for a special ops group. This group would serve as the world’s cleanup crew, addressing issues that required a certain skill set to dispose of the “trash” as needed.

Upon his arrival to the lab, Logan underwent experiments under the direction of Doctor Cornelius. The Doctor was pleased to discover that his latest “acquisition” had a mutation that healed his body faster than humans. Determined to explore the limits of the boy’s mutation, the Doctor created tortuous experiments to test how much damage the child could endure and see how long it took him to recover from it.

A byproduct of these experiments and mistreatment was the darkening of the child’s outlook on people. Seeing early on that the child’s mind was fragile, the Doctor decided that he needed a clean slate to work with. In addition to the experiments on the child’s body, his mind underwent a restructuring that lead to him losing all knowledge of himself and his past. Without a past or emotional ties, the child became the best super soldier for the project.

By the age of 11, Logan had seen and done more in the short three years of his “training” than some of the world’s most elite military special ops groups. Though tall for his age, Logan’s cherubim and unassuming face lent itself perfectly in surprising their enemies. The only flaw with the soldier was his bony claws which broke easily.

It took the Doctor two more years to find a solution to Logan’s flaw “an indestructible metal called adamantium. He figured if he could bond the metal to the child’s bones, they would become unbreakable. He even fashioned a set of sharps claws that would completely replace the bony claws, making the soldier nearly invincible.

Though he had trouble remembering his life before Doctor Cornelius, he saw what life was like for other kids his age whenever he went out on a mission. In their conversations, Logan learned that life was not filled with needles, doctors, blood and death but of foreign things like school, books, malls, and television. Things he didn’t remember ever experiencing. He heard about them and saw them from time to time from a distance. Like a normal child, Logan developed a desire to experience those things.

Now that he knew there was a different type of life, Logan grew tired of the experiments and the poking and prodding. One day after a particularly extreme and excruciatingly painful session, Logan decided that he wouldn’t take it anymore and as soon as he saw an opportunity, he was going to break free. That opportunity came the following day, but at a steep cost.

That day was the day the Doctor selected as the bonding day. His team of chemists had tested the bonding process on several mice beforehand and felt comfortable that they could replicate the process on the mutant child. The Doctor knew procedure would push the boy’s healing factor to the limit but he was willing to risk the life of his best soldier to achieve this goal. If this proved successful, Logan would be the first of many and that possibility alone made the risk worth it.

On the designated day, Logan was retrieved from his cell and brought to the room specially prepared for the operation. His face was outfitted with a mask that pumped in a strong anesthesia while the technicians began the process by inserting large needles all over his body. Soon, the boy’s face changed from mask of fury to one of peace as the strong drug took effect. Ready for the next phase, the boy was lowered in a tank filled with nutrient enrich water that provided his body with fuel for his healing factor as well as buoyancy so they could completely cover the boy’s skeleton without fear of the metal pooling in one place.

The procedure took longer than expected. When the monitor finally displayed that the project was 100% complete, the huge vats of molten adamantium were nearly depleted. However, they had completely run out of the strong anesthesia.

The lab staff held their breath and hoped that anesthesia would last long enough for them to transport the child back to his cell. They knew that without the constant feed of the strong drug, the boy’s body would fight it, bringing him from under its effects. Some of the staff, having experienced the effects of the boy’s rage, wondered how they would handle him now that he was invulnerable.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have to wonder long.

Logan stirred and his eyes opened, shocked to find himself submerged in water. Panicking, he extended his claws and cried out in pain as the metal knives popped out of his knuckles. Enraged, he swung at his glass enclosure and saw that his claws left deep impressions in the glass. Swinging with all his might, he broke through the glass and fell to the ground below, glass embedding into his skin.

Ignoring the pain, he removed the mask and looked closely at his new instruments. A level of rage he had never experienced engulfed him. He roared and snatched the needles from his body, his wounds healing quickly. He looked around and saw that his escape had caused the room to be quarantined, cutting off the lab off from the rest of the building.

Smiling evilly, the child realized this was the opportunity to escape that he had been waiting for. But before he did so, he began to exact his revenge, remembering all of the torture the people meted out to him. In the matter of minutes, he was covered with the blood of his torturers. Breathing hard, he surveyed his surroundings. Determined not to let them do this to another, he began to destroy the room, tearing through the computer equipment and everything else he could get his hands on.

Logan remembered going through the outer wall, finding himself knee deep in snow in the Canadian wilderness. He wondered around for a while before stumbling upon a cabin, several miles away from the lab.

Over the years, Mary and Vernon recalled for him what happened when he was unconscious.

The couple were shocked to see him, lying in the snow, the white powder surrounding him colored crimson. The husband told his wife to grab a blanket and they worked together to wrap the in the blanket and take him inside. Vernon Johns watched as his wife washed the blood from the unconscious child’s body, trying to locate the injury only to learn one was not present. Mary looked back at her husband and shook her head, gazing back at the child, her heart going out to him. During her examination, she found old scars all over his body, letting her know that the child had endure much in his short life.

At Mary’s request, Vernon retrieved the boy from the red tinged water and carried him to the guest bedroom. They worked together to dry him off and gave him a pair of pajamas left by their youngest son after he went away to college. An hour later, they looked up when they heard movement and saw the boy standing in the doorway, chest heaving, eyes wild and confused.

Vernon, pulling his wife behind him, spoke to the boy and after a moment, the boy calmed down, apologizing for his actions. Sensing that everything was okay, Mary stepped from around her husband and slowly approached the child. She asked him if he would like something to eat and he nodded. She tentatively reached out her hand for his and with some hesitation, he took it and allowed himself to be lead to the kitchen. The child’s eyes met Vernon’s and an understanding exchanged between the two. Vernon couldn’t help but think that the child’s eyes contained knowledge of life of someone older than his years.

Over the course of the next few days, they learned very little about the child other than he was one of those mutants as they were called. Mary, happy to have a child in the house again, was okay with him being there but Vernon, knew that the child needed to be around his own kind. Though he didn’t not want to, seeing how his wife enjoyed having the child around, he knew it was best for everyone involved.

Retired from his cushy government job, had made a few contacts over the years with people involved in the mutant rights movement, including an old classmate of his, who he was shocked to learn, was also a mutant. He had stayed in touch with Chuck and reached out to him, telling him about the young man with the metal claws.

When the Professor arrived alone to pick up the young man, he sensed a mental barrier that had been erected in the boy’s mind. Convincing the boy that everything was alright, rather convincing Mary to convince the boy, the Professor began to deconstruct the carefully constructed mental block. He did so slowly, as to not overwhelm he child with a rush of memories, especially since some of them were troubling.

After two hours, the wall had been deconstructed and the boy sat sobbing in Mary’s arms. Vernon thought it best for the Professor to stay the night to which Charles agreed, knowing that the boy needed the time to get settled in his newly open mental space. And the rest, as they say is history.

Sighing, Logan pressed the button on his comlink.

“Omega, report to the Prof’s office ASAP,” he grumbled in the communicator and received responses from his four teammates.





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